


La Petite Mort

by Nele (SuburbanNature)



Category: Lucifer (TV)
Genre: Drug Abuse, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Pre-Episode: S4E1, Withdrawal
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-07
Updated: 2019-08-22
Packaged: 2020-08-12 03:28:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,316
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20143561
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SuburbanNature/pseuds/Nele
Summary: He has not left this room for a week.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I haven't written anything in a long, long time.
> 
> Please enjoy.

Fear.

It makes him feel like he’s rotting. 

Apprehension, insecurity, guilt - it all stems from the same source. It leaves him drowning in an ocean of relentless self-sabotage and a distinct, droning isolation. Everything that once illuminated his life has fizzled out, leaving a skeleton of his miserable existence that is bathed in a dull, lifeless gray.

He has not left this room for a week.

Each day he melts deeper into this couch. His body no longer feels like his own. He is floating somewhere far beyond himself: every fingertip is numb, every limb humming rapturously, every breath clamoring it’s way out of his lungs. 

Sloth is not a sin he often dabbles in.

But he would do anything right now just to feel a little bit of bliss.

His brain is encased in a dense fog. It consumes every bad thought and quiets his mind, leaving all that remains cloaked in an artificial glow. This has become quite a common occurrence; a product of the loneliness that plagues him. He misses her so badly that there is simply nothing to be done about the gaping hole in his chest.

Except try and fill it with intoxication the best he can.

The table is clogged with bottles and cigarette butts and vacant fluorescent cartridges. He shouldn't have allowed himself to dig so deep into this. Shouldn’t have allowed himself to repress, quite literally, every feeling that fluttered into his body. But, then again, it really makes no difference. His life is one devoid of consequence, especially now that she is gone. 

_ Gone. _

The word opens a wound that he’d hoped was closing as a bleak exhaustion begins to drag him down.

_ Something feels different, this time, _ his brain sings to him from somewhere too distant for him to hear.

Then, the elevator chimes.

Downstairs, Chloe Decker had been pacing the floor of Lux for the last twenty minutes before finally gathering the courage to let the elevator close around her. When she arrived, she had expected to walk in and find him there curled over the Steinway, looking poised and a bit disheveled, but when the bartender spotted her he’d told her his boss had been tucked away upstairs for the better part of a week - and that he wasn’t accepting visitors. 

She made a point to ignore this.

”What gives?” Was all she could think to ask.

”I’ve learned not to ask many questions around here.”

And so she departed.

By the time she reached the top she’d felt her fingers start to twitch. She hasn’t yet decided what she is going to say, but she’s not hopeful that it will end well regardless. Even with her, his fuse is short. Shorter still when fueled by the insecurity her disappearance has undoubtedly planted in him. She, however, is not prepared to deal with _ this _.

The deafening silence that greets her immediately causes her ears to ring in a muddled surge of adrenaline. “Lucifer?” She calls, and then spots him, slumped messily into the couch. His shirt is half-buttoned, sleeves rolled up to the elbows, hair tousled. She sees the mess in front of him - the pill bottles, the powders, the liquor - and chokes back a sob as it claws its way out of her chest before she has the opportunity to stop it. “Lucifer.” She repeats, insistent, trying to bring him back to this realm. “What did you do?”

”Detective.” The word forms, graceless, and pours from his mouth with as much distinction as alphabet soup. His eyelids drag open so slowly it’s like they’re made of lead - impossibly heavy. He feels her vaguely begin to fuss over him. Her hands prying his eyes open, skating across his forearms, pressing into his breastbone, fluttering through the network of veins in his wrists. “I thought you weren’t coming back.” His heart warms. An effect he cannot attribute to the drugs.

She can barely even understand him.

And just like that, her touch is gone.

”Wait here.” She says, and disappears again. Almost as if it were only a dream. 

He has no intention of going anywhere.

He tries now, desperately, to stay awake, but it is so incredibly hard. Every piece of his body is screaming at him to sleep.

So he does, if only for a moment.

Next thing he knows, he is being aggressively shoved down onto his back. His head slams against the armrest and he feels a hand cupping the back of his neck.

”Don’t move.” Her voice cracks wide open.

She is so fucking afraid. 

Something is shoved deep into his nasal cavity and it ejects into what, he thinks, must be his brain. He snorts, struggles to climb back upright, but she holds him down. The assault leaves him with his nostrils flaring, choking messily with no result. “What the _ fuck _.” His words are still formless.

”Just... go to sleep.” She sits beside him, lifts his legs into her lap, and then raises a hand to his cheek. “You’re going to need it.” Her voice is sweet but somber.

He doesn’t have the sense to ask what she means by that, so he obliges with a swiftness that only causes her worry to swell. 

She pushes his face gently to the side. It lulls against his shoulder, and he is quiet... aside from the sluggish, rattling breaths that are oozing from his lips. 

Alone now, she starts to cry. Loud and shameless. "Some way to end a vacation, you stupid idiot." He cannot hear her. Doesn't even stir. Chloe sprawls forward, grasps for an uncapped bottle, and swigs deeply from it until the taste makes her want to puke. "Are you trying to kill yourself? If anyone finds out about this you can forget about us working together, you know." Her head falls onto the back of the couch. "I can't- I can't always be here to protect you."

She does not yet know that her presence is the only reason he ever needs protecting in the first place.

___

When he comes to he feels so insurmountably and violently ill that he hardly even has the time to move before he begins to retch. The sound it makes is positively horrifying and it's so evidently brutal that every muscle in his whole body feels like it's begun to seize. 

And then it happens again, and again... and again. 

He hears Chloe yelp from somewhere his mind can't quite locate, but within seconds she is holding a rocks glass beneath his face and he clamors for it, only bringing up measly tablespoons of what he suspects to be rye whiskey and stomach acid. He decides, in that moment, that it is the most rancid taste he has ever endured. His throat is burning and raw and his insides are still spasming like a busboy wringing out a dishcloth. He is trembling so hard against her hand on his back that he can barely even place it. When the gagging finally stops, after what feels like an eternity, he is left desperately gasping for air.

She sits beside him.

Frozen solid.

It shocks her when he is the one who breaks the silence. "What did you do to me?" His voice is all rasp and campfire as opposed to its usual velvet and molasses, but at least now he's coherent. He spits into the glass and slides it to the far end of the coffee table, a sour look on his face. When he revisits the disaster in front of him he is reminded of what he's just exposed her to. A heavy guilt grips him.

"Narcan." Her throat clears. "I had to give you Narcan."

"That wasn't necessary." He blinks up at her, still folded in half at the waist. An apology is brewing on the tip of his tongue but he knows that it won't be enough. "You just carry Narcan around with you then, do you?"

"The police cruiser has a kit in it." They did live in Los Angeles, after all. "You could have died."

"I have you to thank for that, unfortunately."

She scoffs, a bit baffled. "Seriously? I save your life and this is how-"

"I'm sorry." There it is. He was right, it's not enough. "I didn't," he swallows, thickly, "I didn't mean it that way."

Without warning, he stands, wavering on his feet before wandering crudely toward his bedroom. He tries to unbutton his shirt as he stumbles away, but the attempt at multitasking nearly sends him careening into the wall. The two shallow steps that follow almost take him out directly after.

"Lucifer, where are you-" and then she hears it. A muffled garbling noise as he tries to keep himself from spilling his guts onto the floor. Again. "Oh." Her heart sinks and she rises, cautious, not quite sure where she fits into this whole catastrophe of a scenario.

All she knows is that she can't bear to leave him alone.

So she follows.

When she reaches him, he is huddled on the bathroom floor, body continuously demanding to expel even though there is nothing left. She doesn't really understand what to do, or more importantly, where to touch. He looks like a child, like this. Human and small and delicate. She decides that she's foolish for being nervous about something so mundane and she sinks to her knees. A hand wraps around the nape of his neck and she massages into the base of his skull. Sweat is pouring off of him, already causing his shirt to cling to his back. She's aware its a senseless question, but she asks, "Are you okay?" 

"No." He chokes out. This has never happened to him before, and it's dreadful. He tries, as best he can, not to move; thinking that somehow it will ease the feeling of every organ and muscle being ripped apart. 

But, it does not.

Defeated, he sits up. Her hand slips down his back to support his weight as he struggles to find equilibrium before dragging himself to lean on a neighboring wall. Everything aches. It is fierce and unrelenting. All he wants in this moment, more than anything, is to just crumple into a ball and cry. He may be generally shameless, but right now he wants to hold onto whatever shred of dignity he has left.

If he even has any left at all after all of this. 

She shimmies up to him and begins unbuttoning his shirt - finishing the task he had so miserably attempted before. It peels off his body.

"Detective, why don't you just go?" He murmurs. His knees pull up chest and he hugs them. 

"I can't just leave you."

"Why not? It wouldn't be the first time."

That cuts her, and after a dangerously long pause, she admits, "Lucifer, you know, I had to... get away."

"Get away from _ me _." He scoffs, stifles another gag, and moans - pitiful. "Should have stayed away, too. You haven't even been back a day and look at the mess I've dragged you into."

She isn't sure how to respond, so she decides on one of his favored tactics: deflection. "Well, you have always been a bit of a mess, haven't you?" She means it as a joke.

He doesn't laugh. 

Instead, he asks, "Why are you even here?" His tone is accusatory.

But, she knows the answer to this one, "I just wanted to see you."

"Oh right, did you, now? Regret it yet?" His eyes glisten, tears brimming. One escapes over his waterline and he is quick to swipe at it before it gets very far. He hopes she doesn’t notice.

"No. Not really. I," she stammers, "I missed you."

"I missed you, too." It is an overwhelming truth that he is shocked he confesses to, especially with such alacrity. "I'm sorry this is what you had to come back to."

She places a hand over his. Explores the spaces between his fingers with her thumb. Searches for the right words. If anyone had to find him this way, she's somehow glad it was her. "I'm just happy you're not dead."

He cracks a smile, but it’s small and meek. 

"Likewise." A viscous hesitation inserts itself. "Can we..." He recalculates, "Can I go to bed now?"

"I have to give you another dose. To make sure."

"You absolutely will not." He would rather be shot at again than deal with feeling like this any longer than he has to. "I'm fine."

"You are not fine. I leave you alone for a month and now you're dopesick off one dose of naloxone. I spent enough years as a patrol officer to know what that means." Her eyes narrow.

"What are you implying?"

"That you’ve made a habit out of this."

She was right. As sharp as he remembered. "I suppose I have been on a bit of a bender." He laughs a little, joyless. "But please, Detective. Just let me lay down... you can stay, if you must. Keep watch." His expression is begging her. “Please.”

He wins, this time. "You better believe I will." Her hand curls around his and she climbs back to her feet. "Come on, then". It takes longer than she thinks it should for him to unfurl. Each part of his body tests its usefulness and only then does it tug against her to return back upright. His legs shake under him and he walks, tentative, with her at his side. Every movement is so careful, like he's going to shatter at any moment.

The mattress welcomes him. It is still clean and tucked and smells of fresh linen - seemingly the only thing in the apartment that doesn't reek of vomit or alcohol or perspiration. He lowers himself gingerly, curls away from her onto his side, and she sits beside him. Her hand nestles in his hair even though it is damp with sweat. She doesn't anticipate that he'll be able to sleep tonight, but for now she is content just to sit quietly beside him.

And, somehow, he feels like he can breathe again.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was inspired to continue for just a little bit longer. Please rat me out for an mistakes I've made because I have a tendency to miss them.
> 
> Part 1 has been updated now, as well.

He’s beginning to wonder if the morning will ever arrive at all. The time drips by with an agonizing listlessness. Seconds turn to minutes, turn to hours, in which he does not move a muscle. The discomfort is unyielding. It clutches him, sweating him out as he freezes in his bed. He thinks he can almost feel the marrow in his bones boiling, stomach pulsating, mind dribbling uselessly from one empty thought to another and then back again. He never necessarily had a problem with displaying his fragility: he took each gunshot, each slash of a blade, each blow to the face with a comforting amount of indifference. But, this type of pain was unprecedented in the way that it existed everywhere, all the time, all at once. 

She is his only source of comfort, and he must admit that when given the right opportunity, she really did have a knack for assuming the role of a nurturer. Mostly, she says nothing. Her hands just shift between his hair, his neck, his shoulders, his back. Her palms are so warm. Wherever her touch lands, alleviation follows. It causes a wave of relief to crash over him each time she stirs. 

Although he offers no input, she does not pause or waver. After what seems like hours, she sinks down onto her back with him. It appears that the uneasiness he’s caused her is beginning to subside, and for that he is grateful, not only because he’d rather not cause her any more stress than he already has, but mostly because it means she won’t have to force more drugs into him in order to start this ferocious process all over again.

“Chloe?” He whispers, following another lapse of time that feels like an eternity.

But when he turns his head, he finds her asleep.

“Ah, sleeping beauty.” He says to the room. “Jet lag’s finally caught up to you, hasn’t it?”

She hardly has any room to rest. Her leg dangles from his bedside, the rest of her limbs cramped together in an attempt to maximize the small area he’s granted her.

He goes to climb off the opposite end, not daring to move her in fear she may wake. “At least one of us is comfortable.” He knows by now that he’ll spend the rest of the night sleepless and a shower sounds absolutely heavenly right now. His increasing sobriety can’t stand the disarray he’s allowed himself to slip into. So, even though every motion feels like a battle, he stands and begins an attempt to rectify it.

___

A shower has never been so draining. He steps out winded and depleted, but the sticky, sick feeling that adhered to his flesh has been successfully washed away. Still, he doesn’t bother doing anything else to improve his appearance. 

He wanders to the common room and cleans the coffee table - discards everything on it, even the crystal glasses and ornate decanters - and wipes the floor, dissipating the acrid smell in the air. He tries his best to avoid dealing with the shame that’s welling in his throat, but it only continues to build. His eyes are beginning to sting again and he growls, cursing his emotions for being so disobedient. If only he could go back and pretend that this night never happened. That she didn’t have to see him this way, needy and pathetic. That he didn’t have to hurt her, again, the same way he’s hurt her so many times before. 

He sits at the piano and lights a cigarette, the smoke abrasive against his throat.

_ What a disappointment_. The concept rattles in his brain. It spurs an abrupt urge to, once again, self destruct. The feeling is powerful and violent and overwhelms him completely. Makes his skin crawl, as if there are thousands of little insects beneath the surface. The ideations flicker rapidly through his head, intrusive enough to crowd out any other logical reasoning: a quite enticing desire to just throw his body off the balcony; or down an entire bottle (or two, or three) of bourbon; or run as far away from her as possible and destroy the chance of anything positive developing from this.

He does none of these things.

A chill shivers down his spine and causes his hand to twitch against the keys at full force. A loud dissonance slices through the silence. “Shit.”

She jolts awake like she’s just been pulled from some terrible nightmare. “What’s going on? Is everything okay?” She babbles. Her voice is swaddled in sleep and she blinks against the darkness.

“Fine.” He turns away again, eyes locked down in front of him. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to wake you.”

He taps his cigarette against the ashtray and takes another drag, wincing.

Dawn has not yet broken. The city is still cloaked in an inky black and the lights, stretching from the balcony, shimmer on into oblivion. She does forget, for a moment, what has happened here. If it weren’t for waking up alone in his bed at the witching hour, she may have been able to convince herself that she had imagined it. All evidence of what occurred the night before was cleared. Order was restored in such a perfect and particular way that the room, once again, looked as if it belonged in a magazine. 

But, she wasn’t so easily fooled.

She stands. Her bones creak as they’re taken out of the rather uncomfortable position she had been lying in.

Her feet shuffle quietly across the floor. She doesn’t remember having taken her shoes off. “Did you get any sleep?” Her words are distorted as she suppresses a yawn. 

“Not a wink.”

Once she approaches, her hands go to rest on his bare shoulders. “Are you feeling better?”

“Yes, much.” 

She takes a seat beside him. His fingers pluck at the piano, but they lack their usual grace. They have a slight tremor, still, she notices. It shows her that he has either not fully recovered, or that perhaps there is an anxiety that racks him. 

Neither would surprise her.

He turns to look at her. The action is tentative, but his eyes are burning with an intense emotion that she doesn’t recognize. 

“What?” She asks. 

“Why are you here?” It’s clear that the question has been burning a hole into his brain. He just hasn’t been able to shake it.

“I already answered that.” By the way he had asked, she knows he remembers the answer.

“I don’t believe you just came by to ‘catch up’.”

“And what if I did?”

“You _ didn’t_.” He hisses. It comes out more hostile than he intends.

“I needed to see you.”

“Wanted, was the word you used earlier, I believe.” 

Maybe it had been the wrong word.

Then again, maybe it had not.

Regardless, it serves as a little shock to the both of them that he possessed the clarity earlier in the evening to even recall such a detail. On her end, she had anticipated him to end up with little memory of it at all.

“Why can’t it be both?”

He sighs, rubs his face. “Just, tell me why.” He wants to tell her that he’s fine without her. That he doesn’t need her, but he doesn’t. He knows it wouldn’t be an honest response.

“I was afraid.” She confesses and gazes down to her interlocked fingers resting in her lap.

“Of?” He’s trying to pry what he considers to be the correct answer out of her. 

“You.”

Of course she was. Any other reaction and he would have begun to call her sanity into question.

“I needed to come here and remind myself why I was being foolish. Childish. Short-sighted.”

“For trusting me.”

“No. For fearing you.”

He smiles, crooked, in the way that he does when he knows he’s undeserving of both her flattery and her acceptance. Another plume of smoke dissipates into the air.

“You’ve never lied to me. You’ve never lied to anyone.” It is a statement that she could only say with confidence if it was about him. “You’ve only ever tried to protect me. For years now.” If that wasn’t enough to award someone a few good graces, she’s at a loss.

“I only did it for myself.”

“No, you’re wrong.”

“I hurt people. I hurt _ you _.”

“And I hurt you, too.” This declaration rings, stannic, through the air. It drifts fully up to the ceiling. Drips down the walls. Stuns him. Incapacitates him in a way that he is at a sudden loss for words. His mouth opens and closes. It hits him that, as angry as he wants to be, as much as he wants to place the blame on her in order to pacify the ache that boils inside of him, he absolutely cannot stand to hear her do it to herself. “Lucifer?” She murmurs to shake him out of his trance.

“I’m sorry… I’m sorry, I just didn't mean to disappoint you. None of this is your fault.” He understands, deep down, that she had done all the right things for the right reasons. It just wasn’t what he wanted. In that way, he really was selfish. It was something he had a difficult time coming to terms with. “I don’t want you to feel like you have to worry about me.”

“You don’t have any control over when and where I worry.”

“I did, this time.”

An agreeing quiet sinks in. “Yeah. I guess so.”

And the pair fall silent.

He still wants to apologize, continuously and profusely. He wants to repeat it until the words swell with enough meaning and sincerity that they burst over their heads like a water balloon. But, there is nothing left to be done. The blame rests surely on his shoulders. He can forgive her, he is convinced of that much. Though when it comes to extending the same mercy to himself, he’s not even sure where to begin. 

He sighs and it shakes, sets down the cigarette in the ashtray to let it the remainder of it smolder slowly into dust. 

“I’m not angry with you, you know.” She tells him, after searching for what she wanted to be the perfect combination of words to ease his restless turmoil. She’s not convinced it will suffice, but it’s all she could manage to find.

But it does, in fact, cause some of the tension in his muscles to obviously dissolve. “Thank you.” He withholds another attempt at atonement, and instead presses a kiss to her forehead: uncharacteristically tender and docile. A distinct tingling sensation erupts throughout her whole body, and she smiles, genuine, for the first time in hours. Perhaps even days.

“Just don’t do it again.”

He doesn’t reply. Only nods in a way that tells her he’d already decided this.

___

It’s three-thirty in the morning when he takes her to breakfast. Said to her, _ the city’s awake and so are we_.

He sips on a cup of coffee: black; and her on a milkshake: strawberry. Both are too tired to stomach real food.

There is an illuminating glow between them now. It is a stark contrast to the dim evening they’d shared. He, lighthearted again, is steeping in the joy of her presence. She recounts the stories she’d collected in Europe. They were all of places he’s already visited, but the enthusiasm in which she shared them offered a new perspective. He had forgotten, it felt like, of the raincloud over his head. And she was just happy to move past it.

He drops her off at quarter-past-four, walks her to her doorstep, tells her goodnight, and offers nothing more.

“I’ll see you tomorrow?” She looks up at him, her hand resting on the doorknob.

“Wouldn’t miss it.”


End file.
